


You and Me (We Wanted It All)

by wily_one24



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Post S4, ficlets that grow, generalised angst, tumblr prompt gone awry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-09 10:09:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4344455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wily_one24/pseuds/wily_one24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes them a month to bring Emma back from the darkness. It's not a horrendously long amount of time, but long enough. Too many things can happen in a month.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I nearly lost you.

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** You know, I knew this would happen. One tumblr prompt, became requests for Regina's POV, became a longer than ficlet to be posted on tumblr fic, I knew it! I KNEW IT! Damn you, Anon. 
> 
> **A/N2:** Robin may appear briefly in the second part, but it's harmless and painless, I promise. 
> 
> **Prompt** : I nearly lost you.

***

_“I nearly lost you!”_

Those are the words she hears when she wakes up, the words she hears when she goes to sleep at night, and the words she hears when she bites on her lower lip, concentrating super hard to wrap the present just right. 

“You got her a present?” Henry rolls his eyes, ever the teenager and really she should be more annoyed at his attitude, but she’s just grateful that he has it in him to be normal at all anymore. “You realise four months isn’t a gift thing, right?”

Emma nods. 

“I know.”

And frowns as the shiny glossed ribbon doesn’t sit just right. 

“You’re a push over, Ma.”

Emma nods again, furrowing her brow as she carefully… oh so carefully… ties another bow. 

“I know.”

“I guarantee she didn’t get you anything.”

His voice has gone from slightly teasing down to a sharper register, something a little darker, pointed, hovering only this side of mean.  
Emma sets her jaw. 

“I know.”

“Why do you…?”

She pulls the ends of the bow a little too tight, cementing the knot into something that cannot be undone lightly. Perfection is not achievable anyway. 

It never is 

“Stop it.” When she looks at him, eyes hard and knowing, Henry has the grace to back down. “Just stop trying to ruin this for me. Leave it alone.”

***

_I nearly…_

Emma turns over in the bed, the sheets clinging to her in a sticky, sweaty mess. 

_… lost you!_

She bites down on a whine as her eyes pop open to look at the grey ceiling, shadowed and dark and all too familiar. Her hands twitch against the blanket as she fights the instinct to push it off her violently and jump out of the bed. 

“Hey.” Warm and sleepy and caring, the voice comes with a hand smoothing over her shoulder. “You okay?”

Emma smiles, at least her mouth does. The night hides her eyes. 

“I’m fine.” She leans over and kisses Regina’s neck. “Go back to sleep.”

_I nearly…_ Regina’s touch is soft, fingers stroking down her arm _… lost you!_

Those are the words she hears in her dreams, her nightmares. Her memories. The thick, anguished cry of the woman who had bought her back from the darkness, had drawn her into an embrace, then pushed her away, striking closed fists against her chest as she yelled. 

_You idiot! You goddamn foolish insane well meaning idiot! How dare you? How dare you do this? How dare you claim this for my happiness? Don’t you understand? I nearly lost you!_

She has been with Regina every day and night since. 

***

_I nearly…_

The office is dull and dreary and her paperwork is all done. She doesn’t really care; it’s hard to get very amped about the minutiae of daily life when your soul has been bounced back and forth over the line of darkness and good like a ping pong ball. 

_I nearly..._

But she does it all and does it promptly. 

Like any good robot.

“Good afternoon, Sheriff.” 

The honey warm voice of her girlfriend enters before the clicking of her heels and Emma leans back in her chair, crosses her arms behind her head, and grins. 

“Hey yourself, Madam Mayor.”

_I nearly… I nearly…_

“I was thinking maybe we could make cheeseburgers for dinner?”

Regina says it like a question, everyday, off hand, as if it doesn’t matter, but there is a glint in her eyes, a determination in her face that suggests otherwise. Emma ignores it. 

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

The frown gets swallowed quickly, barely even makes it to Regina’s face, before it’s covered up again by a bland and genial smile.

“What about pizza? We could order…?”

_… lost you… lost you… you… you..._

“Let’s make that chicken thing.” Emma suggests, an eager smile on her face, and a determination heavier than Regina’s. “With the rice? That sounds awesome. You love that.”

“Yes.” And Regina capitulates, because she always does now. “Of course.”

***

_How DARE you?_

She is cold and shivering, teeth chattering, when Regina finds her cowering in the floor of the shower, icy water hitting her goose pimpled skin.

_How…_

“Emma.” Regina coos it, softly and sadly, reaching in to turn off the water. “Emma, please, tell me what’s wrong?”

_… DARE…_

She says nothing, shaking her head ever so softly as she is pulled upright and out of the cold tiles. A warm, fluffy towel surrounds her soon after and Emma is weak enough to lean into the caress of the hand that rubs it over her face and cheek. 

__… you?!??_ _

“I’m… I’m… I’m sorry.” 

“Emma, shhh.” Regina kisses the top of her head, arms cradled around Emma’s body like a shield. “There’s nothing… not a thing to be sorry for.” 

__I nearly lost you._ _

_***_

“She’s not happy.”

And Emma flinches. 

“I’m trying.” 

She doesn’t look up, doesn’t meet Henry’s eyes, because he’s always seen the truth, always known before everyone else and she cannot, will not, capitulate on this. 

“Emma.” His voice is equal parts caring and frustrated. “You don’t need to…” 

“Yes. I do!” She hisses, weeks and months of it erupting out of her unbidden. “You don’t understand! I have to make her happy! I’m doing everything I can. I’m trying so hard. I give her everything she wants and i take nothing!” 

His hand reaching for hers is bigger than she ever remembers. 

“She doesn’t want all that” He tells her. “She just wants you.” 

But all her fight is gone. 

“No, she doesn’t.” Her voice flat. “I love her, Henry, I’m doing all this because I love her.” 

When she does look up, his face looks ready to protest, but her words shut him down. 

“But she doesn’t love me. She’s guilty, because of what I did, but she doesn’t…” A sigh. “If I can’t have the real thing; I’ll take this. So, yeah, I have to give her everything, even if it kills me.” 

_***_


	2. Almost

***

_Almost._

Almost is a dangerous word for Regina; it always has been.

It takes her...

It takes _them_ a month to bring Emma back from the darkness. It’s not a horrendously long amount of time, but long enough. Too many things can happen in a month. 

When Robin asks her again, voice tight and much too careful, if she’s busy again trying to save the Savior, Regina says yes. Then she does something she should have done a long time ago and tells him to stay out of her life. 

_She gave everything for me!_

_That doesn’t mean you have to do the same for her._

_It means exactly that!_

_Saving people is her job, Regina, she knew the dangers. Now you’re skipping meals, ignoring people, ignoring sleep and to what? I am your True Love and you were ready to abandon me to New York!_

_We might have been! Decades ago. But I am not her and you are not him and too many things have happened; we are not those people anymore and you are no longer my True Love, or any kind of love to be honest._

She remembers the freedom of those words; the way saying them took an unbearable weight from her shoulders. It’s a tad more subtle than an Aggrabahn Viper, but it feels just the same. 

When Emma materialises in front of them, in front of her, Regina curses the word almost.

***

Almost; her relationship with Daniel; a fleeting brush with happiness that was destined to crash and burn. 

Almost; her chance of escape, Rocinante between her legs and fresh air in her lungs. 

Almost; the way the King’s eyes had seemed kind the first few times he had looked her over. 

Almost; her new life in a new land set to give her everything she could ever want. 

Almost; a son who would love her without question, be on her side against the entire world. 

Almost...

Almost was now, she sees it in a flash, the welcoming grin of Emma, the slide of a hand at her elbow, the complimentary mix of magic, laughter over shots, safety and comfort and friendship and...

Almost: I nearly lost you!

She touches Emma, unbelieving, her relief expressed in an embrace just to feel the skin and bones and muscle made flesh, feel the long lost tickle of white magic that accompanies all her interactions with Emma. 

Then she gets angry. 

***

Kissing was not what she expected from her anger. Kissing is exactly what she got. 

Emma as a friend is eager and desperate to please; like a puppy begging for praise. Regina is not surprised that the initial stages of Emma as a girlfriend amplify that side of her.  
For a month, two, Regina sees what she wants to see, believes what she wants to believe. She is happy, they are happy, this is what happiness finally feels like. 

Emma lives in her house, sleeps in her bed, gives her everything she asks for and many things she doesn’t. She is ashamed to admit that the Queen that was bred into her, trained into her since birth, accepts this all too easily. 

It comes to her one night that while Emma Swan has always been eager to please, eager for approval, she was also her own person. They clashed heads because of Emma’s refusal to submit, to capitulate her own wants and needs and desires. Their passion was born of confrontation and stubbornness. 

And Regina cannot remember Emma asking for or taking anything for herself.

“What do you want to do today?”

It’s the weekend and they have some rare time to themselves not dominated by threats or family or responsibility. 

Emma merely smiles at her over the skillet she’s cooking pancakes in. 

“Whatever you want.”

For the first time since they got together; this answer is irritating. 

“But what do you _want_ to do?”

Emma shrugs, smile still in place, seemingly happy and carefree as she stands in Regina’s kitchen, wearing an oversized flannel shirt with muscular thighs underneath, bare legs all the way to her bare feet, hair scrunched messily into a ponytail at the back of her head. 

“I’m easy, you choose today.”

She is beautiful, unworried and smiling. She is relaxed. 

She is lying. 

Not by the fact that her words are untrue, specifically, but in the spirit of honesty. 

“Emma.” She begins. “I...”

“Pancakes are ready!” Emma enthuses, sliding a fluffy disc onto a plate in front of her. “Made just the way you like them!”

***

Almost.

She is in a relationship with an almost Emma. 

Regina watches this Emma go about her day, smile at everyone around her but mostly at Regina, watches her do everything like a person so very grateful to be back from the dark side

Regina is, she realises like a stab to the gut, watching Emma perform.

Like a trained seal, a robot going through its programming; like a girl trapped in a castle with the noose of Queen around her neck. 

The hardest thing to do is look in Emma’s eyes, because it’s the one place the performance doesn’t quite reach. 

She loves Emma and she is afraid that Emma only almost loves her back. 

***

Regina’s hips lift from the mattress. 

“Eh… Eh… Emmmmmmaaaaaaaa.”

It’s a long, low moan of a name that falls from her lips as she lies on the bed, surrounded by warm Emma flesh pinning her down. 

“You like that?” It’s a dirty, low husk in her ear as she whimpers. “Yeah, I know. I know you do.”

And, oh god, she does. She really, really does. 

“I want… I want…” Her breath comes in pants too quick to form words. 

_To touch you. To feel you. You. I want you._

“Shh.” And Emma shuts her down with a nibble of her earlobe. “I’ve got you.”

Her body has been wrung of all its strength, five orgasms in less than an hour and she is putty in Emma’s hands. She knows this and she knows that Emma knows this. Her reactions are boiled down to the cellular, all panting and muscles jerking, the flexing of limbs, the spasm of ecstasy. 

“I know what gets you off, Regina.”

Emma continues, but Regina is determined to change this script. This time, this one time. 

Emma must feel it, too. 

“I’ve spent months learning you.” It’s half brag, half promise, all shiny distraction. “I want to see you come again.”

The addition of another finger and the twisting of all of them makes Regina helpless in the crashing crest of her sixth orgasm of the evening, back arching and falling as she lies in a breathless heap. 

“You’re so beautiful.” Emma kisses the side of her sweaty neck, pride in her voice, awe. “I love you.”

Regina closes her eyes and feels the shift of Emma on the mattress, settling down next to her, all warm body and loose limbed comfort as she snuggles. She knows Emma’s body as she knows her own, she loves this woman next to her. 

This is almost perfect. 

***

“Henry.” She sits him down one evening when Emma is still at the station. “How do you think Emma is doing?”

His eyes are wide and shrewd; he always was good at reading the meaning behind the spoken words and she loathes bringing him into this. But she has worked this from every angle and it’s useless. 

Emma and her together could be everything, but as they are now they are cautious and genial and too eager to let things slide for the sake of the illusion of happiness. She wants Emma to be happy, too scared of the loss from that one month that solidified at Robin’s urging to really push the woman to reveal what is wrong. And Emma, Emma lives like sacrifice is a way of life and becomes a master of distraction whenever she gets called on it. 

“She’s…” His words drawl out, reluctantly and unsure. “… getting there?”

Regina sighs. It’s not the best answer, but it’s the truest one. 

“I only want her to be happy.”

The whisper comes out like a confession, like the admission of guilt. 

Henry quirks his head to the side and examines her. 

“That’s all she wants for you.”

They are his puzzle and she should warn him that it’s almost a futile one; it will drive him crazy, she’s almost all the way there trying to figure it out. 

***

Emma has the toughest shell and Regina sees it crack only once. 

She is supposed to be at the Mayor’s office, but her right heel broke and she came home to get different shoes. It is Emma’s day off and she would expect sound and life in the house. Emma eating or watching a movie or something, anything. 

What she gets is an eerie silence and a chill crawling up her spine as she climbs the stairs. 

She finds Emma in the shower, skin prickled with bumps, shivering and cowering in the corner under an icy spray. The most worrying thing is the sobs. 

Regina pulls her out, towels her dry, wraps her in a warm robe and draws her back to the bed. The office can wait. This strange, catatonic Emma that can barely murmur a coherent reply needs her. She dries Emma’s hair, holds her hands in her own until she can feel warmth return to them, slides up on the bed and tucks her knees in behind Emma’s. 

They lay in silence for the better part of an hour and Emma lets her run fingers through her hair. 

She is not surprised when Emma falls asleep. 

She is definitely not surprised when Emma pretends nothing happened when she wakes up. 

***

She is nervous and she hates being nervous. 

“Is she…?” The very question is probably breaching some sort of law, but she’s fairly confident the law is applied loosely if at all in this town. “Is she okay?”

The word okay leaves her mouth like an impossibility. 

Archie’s eyes are kind and sympathetic and galling. 

“I can tell you everything she said.”

“No.” Regina is desperate to help Emma get well, but even she has her boundaries. “Those sessions are private, I don’t want to betray…”

“She says nothing.” Archie tells her. “She comes in, sits in the chair looking out the window for forty five minutes, then leaves. I’m sorry, Regina, she won’t let me help her.”

Regina almost wants to cry.

***

“We need to talk.”

Emma flinches and Regina wants to kick herself for the fear in her eyes. 

“Talk?” Emma is all attention, scared of the content but willing to do anything asked of her. “About what?”

“Emma.” She loves that word; that name, the way it comes out of her mouth. “We can’t keep going on like this.”

Panic. Panic. Emma’s emotions hinge on a switch that is almost physical. Now that she’s looking for it, she can see the change, it’s not an instant thing, but the panic is quickly drowned out by a bland expression meant to reassure. If she wasn’t looking, she wouldn’t have seen it. 

“Like what?”

She breathes in, takes all the strength she can from the oxygen molecules she managed to trap, and then looks her in the eye. 

“You’re not happy.”

Laughter is not what she expects, a high pitched trill of surprise and relief, and then Emma grins, reaching out to hold her hand. Four warm fingers and a soft thumb caressing the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. Regina cannot help but smile down. 

“That’s nonsense, Regina. You make me happy.”

She is caught, because she won’t be, she refuses to be like everyone else, like Emma’s well-meaning but blunt parents who look at her and say we want who you used to be without acknowledging who she is now. 

***

Emma makes herself palatable. 

She bends and twists and denies herself to make others happy, to make Regina happy. 

The form isn’t new; the intensity is. 

_I want you, I want you, I want you._

The words run on repeat in her head as she watches Emma lose weight, lose shine, lose the spark of life in her eyes that always set her above the rest of the peons in her town before the curse broke. 

Regina makes all kinds of tempting, heart attack inducing foods to try to lure Emma out. Emma eats them without complaint, but without fanfare, and then Emma begins to learn cooking. She makes Regina’s favourite meals with an aggressive and undeniable zeal and Regina steps back. 

Where are you going?

The question runs through her brain, but it is the least important one. 

_Why? Emma, why are you going?_

***

“Mom?”

Henry finds her in the middle of the night, sitting at the table in the kitchen, surrounded by clinical surfaces and silence. Emma is sleeping upstairs and Regina cannot close her eyes, sick with worry, knowing she will be back in the bed in minutes. She won’t leave Emma too long; the nightmares come frequently and it seems it is only Regina that can calm them. 

“I can’t…” Her head is in her hands and her heart is in her throat. “I can’t do this anymore, Henry.”

She never wanted him in the middle of this, but he is not an idiot and he is already there, watching with knowing eyes as both she and Emma fall apart. 

He sits with a heavy thump on the chair opposite her and she doesn’t need to look up to see his disapproval. 

“I’m making her worse.” It comes out like an explanation, but it feels like an admission long overdue. “She needs… she needs…”

But that’s one of the main problems; Regina doesn’t know what Emma needs and Emma won’t tell her. 

“No, Mom.” He is her boy, but he has grown into so much more without her notice. “She needs you.”

An almost man, a caring, gentle soul that is desperate to fix all around him. 

“She’s like this because of me!”

He might be intelligent, observant, but she has no idea how and no want to explain to him the complexities of emotional obligation, the way it can weigh you down and steal your soul, strip anything left of yourself away from an empty shell that merely goes through the motions of living. 

“Mom.” He sounds heartbroken. “Do you know what Emma told me when I first bought her here?”

Regina thinks, because she has heard these stories. Something about giving him away for his own good, having a home until she was three, lots of things about Operation Cobra, but none of them seem applicable. 

“It was back when I thought you didn’t love me.” The regret is palpable in his face and his voice, they are over all of it by now, but the memory still stings. “She told me that at least you wanted me and that’s better than nothing.”

Her mouth falls open. 

“She doesn’t think you love her, Mom. So she’s trying to make you want her.”

Everything crystalises and she cannot breathe with the realisation. 

“I’ve tried.” And she has, she knows this, she has tried her hardest to prove to Emma how she feels, but Emma is an expert at deflecting, Emma has twisted their interactions so that it is all about Regina and nothing about her. “I have tried to show her.”

Henry levels his gaze at her, sad and knowing and empathetic. 

“But she doesn’t trust it.” His hopeless shrug is enough to tell her he has no idea how to fix it. “You can tell her a thousand times, show her, but she can’t trust it, she’ll never believe she’s worthy.”

Worthy of Regina’s love, worthy of the title Savior, worth of being called mother or daughter or friend, worthy of being brought back from the darkness. 

Oh. 

Oh. 

_Oh._

Too many things make sense all of a sudden. 

***

She crawls into bed just after the first whimper appears. 

Regina draws Emma into her arms, sleepy and heavy and compliant. Blonde hair drifts into her face and she blows it away, content to feel the arm that slides up over her torso and grips her waist, content to listen to the agitated breathing slow down into a deeper somnorific hum. 

It is not going to be easy. 

But they are _almost_ there.

***


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The pen Regina uses to write is her favourite. It is not the most expensive pen, but not the cheapest. It’s the one that flows the best, that feels most comfortable in her hand as she loops and whorls her letters, the ink is a light blue, almost glittery, and she likes the way it forms her words._
> 
>  
> 
> _Emma uses a #2 pencil._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N** Anyone remember this fic? Anyone remember asking for another part? Ha ha ha. Yeah, sorry. Um... it just happened. I... don't know. But it's not _all_ bad... that's something, right?
> 
>  **A/N2:** Yeah, ok, it's probably calling for a fourth part, but... who the fuck knows, right? Don't hold your breath is all I'm saying. 
> 
> **A/N3:** This is what I like to call a quick, hard, fic against the wall. One hour. Done. So... uh... mistakes abound, probably.

It takes Regina three weeks to act and approximately five minutes to convince Emma to agree. 

Of course, Emma hasn’t argued anything in the half a year since she’s been back, so it’s no surprise. 

They go to couples counselling on Wednesdays. 

Archie starts them off slow and simple and he listens as Regina talks and talks and watches as Emma shifts and blinks, but says nothing. Then he listens to Emma declare there is nothing wrong. He looks at both of them and Regina feels the room fill up with her words, as if she has nothing but complaints. 

She does not complain about Emma, she can’t complain about her, but she cannot live like this, cannot let Emma live like this. 

They are each given a notebook and a homework assignment. 

Write down what makes them happy. 

That night, Emma fills three pages and Regina stares at her book, the lightly lined page glaring up at her. Each sentence she begins to write feels like a lie, like a falsehood meant to garner Archie’s approval. 

The night before their next session, Regina fills the page with details about Emma and Henry. 

***

Archie skims the books with a slight hum and notes something in his file. 

When he gives them back, he tells them their next assignment is to write down only three things that make them happy. With the caveat that they cannot mention each other or Henry. Anything, he says, no matter how small or large. Chocolate or bubble baths or the sun, a tv show, water, whatever they can think of. 

Regina watches Emma’s face pale. 

*** 

After three weeks, Emma page is still blank. 

Archie doesn’t blink. 

Regina wants to scream. 

***

She is no stranger to therapy, not with Archie. The amount of time Regina has spent discovering herself and the motives behind some of her actions is staggering, but ultimately worth it. She is not surprised, and most definitely prepared, when Archie tells them to write down three reasons why they think they deserve to be loved. 

\- “Because everybody deserves to be loved,” she writes neatly.  
\- “Because I have made great strides to making amends for all the wrong I have done, no matter how insurmountable,” is written underneath.  
\- “Because I have so much love to give back,” is her final answer. 

The pen she uses to write is her favourite. It is not the most expensive pen, but not the cheapest. It’s the one that flows the best, that feels most comfortable in her hand as she loops and whorls her letters, the ink is a light blue, almost glittery, and she likes the way it forms her words. 

Emma uses a #2 pencil. 

As hard as she tries, Regina cannot stop herself peeking into Emma’s book before their next session. 

The page is ruined with half started words, rubbed out so viciously the paper is almost torn. 

There are no complete sentences. 

***

Archie wants them to get angry at themselves in a scathing letter. 

Regina bites down on the bile as she pictures purple magic and bitterness and deceit, but she doesn’t hold back and critiques every bad choice she has made, time after time, land after land, curse after broken curse. 

Emma doesn’t stop writing for four days. She writes with a passion Regina can barely remember seeing in her, energy renewed, angry slashes across the page, a snarl on her lips. 

Regina has to go upstairs to throw up. 

***

For the first time in their sessions, Emma has something to give. She offers Archie her book with a flourish, as if she’s proud, as if she isn’t telling them all they need to know without speaking a word. 

“You keep that for now.” 

If Emma acts surprised by his reluctance to take the proffered work, it is nothing to the stunned look she has when he pulls out a manila folder. Regina doesn’t recognise it at first, but Emma must, if her wide eyes are anything to go by. 

Archie opens the file and Regina sees newspaper clippings, managing to skim one or two headlines about found infants and foster care, and things become a little clearer. 

Regina stops breathing when Archie hands Emma a photo of a little girl. 

She is perhaps six, skinny, too skinny for a child of that age, her hair straight and blond, her eyes green and not quite dulled but not as bright as a child’s should be. 

“Now,” Archie’s words are soft and calm, but they sound like canons firing in such a small room. “Read your letter to her.”

And Emma cries. 

***

Emma cries all the way home, still clutching the photo. 

Henry quickly agrees to spend the rest of the day and night at the Charming’s apartment. 

And Regina, Regina takes care of Emma the best way she knows how. 

She holds her, wraps Emma up in her arms and folds them both into the sofa as a clumsy mix of limbs and hair and faces, holds her until the sobs turn into tired sniffles. Then she runs a bath, warm and scented and gentle, as she helps Emma and lowers her into the water, soaping her up and rinsing her off. 

She dries Emma, a pliant and yielding Emma, with fluffy towels and dresses her in comfy pyjamas, running a brush through her long and tangled hair. 

And all the while she whispers words she’s said all along, but thinks might finally be getting through, words of love and cherish and want and gratitude and adoration and amazement and beauty. She makes Emma eat something simple, drink some water, brush her teeth, climbs into bed with her and holds her some more. 

Emma sleeps and, to both their surprise, doesn’t have a nightmare. 

***

Regina wakes to whispered words. 

In the near light of almost dawn, the words are distant and blurred, just the hum of a voice and inflection, without the distinction of understanding. They’re not coming from the bedroom; they’re coming from the bathroom. 

She gets up slowly, gently, as if afraid to burst something, something small and intangible and indistinct.

As she nears the bathroom door, open, Regina sees Emma facing the mirror, sees the crumpled photo taped there. 

And the book Emma is reading from. 

Her first instinct is to scream, to run forward and rip the book from Emma’s hands, to yell at her for all the cruel words she imagines Emma to have written, the months of self-recrimination and hatred and anger, imagines them all hissed at Emma, let alone a child Emma. 

But this is not her moment and Emma’s book is red. 

The book she’s reading from is blue. 

And then her words become clear:

\- Because everybody deserves to be loved.  
\- Because I have made great strides to making amends for all the wrong I have done, no matter how insurmountable.  
\- Because I have so much love to give back. 

***

end chapter three.


End file.
